Senate Democrats launched an investigation into the Trump administration’s overhaul of federal vaccine policy under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) sent a letter to Kennedy on Thursday demanding HHS officials produce official records of the administration’s decision last year to fire and replace all the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a key vaccine safety panel that affects insurance coverage for immunizations.Although Kennedy had previously maintained that the decision to disband and reformulate the ACIP was his decision, the secretary testified before the Senate Finance Committee in April that he made the move in consultation with the White House’s Domestic Policy Council.
“The American people deserve to know the reasons that the administration decided to gut ACIP and whether that decision was based on the political and personal agendas of a small group of vaccine cynics who you and President Trump sought to appease,” Wyden and Hassan wrote.Wyden and Hassan characterize the reconstitution of the ACIP as “the deliberate dismantling of the nation’s vaccine advisory body” and say Kennedy replaced the board members with “handpicked allies, several of whom have built careers, and earned profits, undermining the very vaccines they are now charged with evaluating.”Kennedy has long expressed skepticism about vaccines and was involved in key litigation against vaccine manufacturers, representing patients who claim they or their children were severely injured by vaccines.After Kennedy’s reformulation of the panel, the new members of the committee made several sweeping changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, including rolling back the long-standing recommendation that all infants receive the hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth and changes to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children.After lawsuits from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other organizations, a federal court in March ruled that the ACIP members appointed by Kennedy, who were from various medical disciplines, lacked the vaccine-specific expertise required to serve on the ACIP and froze the committee’s recommendations.Following the freeze, Kennedy and his team modified the ACIP charter in April, broadening the scope of the committee’s membership criteria and adding an additional purpose for the committee to identify “gaps in vaccine safety research.” At the time, HHS officials said the ACIP charter update was part of a routine reauthorization schedule.Hassan and Wyden also contend that the secretary selected attorney Aaron Siri, one of Kennedy’s antivaccine litigation colleagues, to assist in the selection of the new committee members as well as the formulation of the new ACIP charter for ideological reasons.“As we have done for over a decade, our firm and clients continue to suggest, demand, petition, and litigate against HHS to safeguard civil and individual rights, increase vaccine safety, and recognize, treat, and compensate the vaccine injured,” Siri told the Washington Examiner in a statement.He said its activities were the same as those of major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, which “seek to influence to do the opposite. We hope HHS begins to comply with our numerous requests and demands, including those in the around 100 lawsuits we currently have pending against HHS and its agencies.”The senators requested from Kennedy’s team extensive records of the communications between HHS and White House staff regarding the decision to disband and reformulate the ACIP, to be given to the Senate Finance Committee no later than July 17.They also requested all records regarding the vetting of replacement ACIP members and all records regarding the compliance with federal laws regulating the dismissal and selection of advisory committee members.Hassan and Wyden wrote to Kennedy that he has used his authority over the ACIP “to deliver the policy outcomes you have spent decades pursuing.”RFK JR. ANNOUNCES $700 MILLION IN FUNDING TO COMBAT ADDICTION AND MENTAL ILLNESS“Make no mistake: this is your anti-vaccine agenda,” the senators wrote. “You have spent your career sowing doubt about vaccines, profiting from litigation against their manufacturers, and pledging to use the powers of HHS as Secretary to validate theories the scientific community has long since rejected. Your reconstruction of ACIP is the culmination of that project.”The Washington Examiner contacted HHS with a request for comment on the Senate investigation.
